The GOP Guarantees Single-Payer Health Care!

Bend Over Sweet Cheeks!  Here It Comes Again!

I warned you.  I told you at least three times that the GOP was setting us up for permanent Obamcare or Single-Payer Health Care.  But you didn't listen.  Why?  Because I am an unknown.  Or because I don't drool when President Trump makes a speech.  Or because I don't care if I or you lose a government give-away.  They are all just excuses to whistle past the graveyard. But no matter.

And so the reaming continues. There have been so many opportunities to truly kill the Beast and we have squandered them all. There are so many people who will see what this article is about and groan, “Oh. Politics.” They’ll smirk and click over to videos kitties playing with toilet paper or some jackass licking a toilet. And they will be entertained.

And that, friends and neighbors, is why the GOP is getting away with the preservation of Obamacare. I am not the only one sounding the claxon, trying to rally resistance to Obamacare and Obamacare lite. You have been warned so many times.

A Look at the Single-Payer Healthcare Scam

Let’s review. As the present Administration came to power, item number one on the agenda was to eliminate the government control of the health insurance industry.   Few remember, because of the endless mantra obediently touted by governing class, the idea was to repeal Obamacare. NOT “repeal and replace”. As soon as you say replace, as a Republican, you are full of shit.

But as soon as people like Paul Ryan (R- WI) added the word “replace”, everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew we were about to get played for chumps. No one listened. You therefor deserve what is about to happen to you.

A few members of Congress, like Congressmen Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), stood their ground against this and would have been successful in their fight if YOU had been more engaged. If YOU had shared as many of these warnings as you did videos of teenagers lighting farts or riding tricycles off of garage roofs. LOL.

But you didn’t. You are going to watch as the GOP accelerates the disasters Obamacare was certain to cause, paving the way for a single-payer government healthcare system. You are going to watch as everyone but the extremely wealthy and the governing class ends up on low-quality, inefficient healthcare.

Let’s recall that Obamacare was never about improving healthcare in this country. It was about the government taking over the insurance industry as another means of control and extortion over citizens; YOU! It was an intentionally failed model that could not ever be funded enough to survive. The idea was for it to fail and for Dems to declare, “Well, we tried our best. But the system can’t be saved. Now we have to completely eliminate the greedy insurance industry and pay for everyone’s third world healthcare.”

Half the country would have been STUPIDLY grateful. The other would have been looking around, dazed, saying, “What the hell just happened?”

Well, that’s not the way it is working out. As I write this, you are being burned in so many ways it is difficult to list all the con games being played out. But I’ll try.

The Starting Line

Right out of the gate, alarm bells should have been going off the day Ryan and Trump gleefully rolled out the plan that Trump now calls “mean, mean, mean” (he read that on Twitter). From the outset, the starting proposal the GOP was hawking represented 75% of everything Obamacare is! There are no reforms! Let me repeat that. THERE ARE NO REFORMS!

The entire structure is left in place to be entirely reinstated with the next election, or if the GOP decides it needs more of money (baksheesh) from the insurance industry. And while they eliminate mandates, calling that progress, they are accelerating the crash of the whole system. It is Obamacare without the funding. So the inevitable crash is much closer now than before.

When that crash occurs, will politicians suddenly find a sense of honesty and responsibility and say, “Okay we tried government-run insurance and it didn’t work. It’s time to go back to letting the private sector do what it does best”?

Noooooo. The immediate cry from all Dems and the GOP “leaders” will be, “Well, we tried to let a few insurance companies and the government to dominate a sixth of the economy and it didn’t work. The only answer now is for the government to take over the whole healthcare system.”

The Medicaid Misdirection

First there is no reason to talk about Medicaid and health insurance in the same breath. Medicaid isn’t insurance. It is one of a long list of government goodies given to the needy and far more of the not-so-needy.

And while using Medicaid as a shill issue in this argument, the GOP is going to increase Medicaid spending at just a slightly lower rate than the Dems intended to. Right now, a family of four making $98,400 qualifies for free government healthcare under Medicaid. And the GOP will grow this number. So while we see the battle over Medicaid “cuts” unfold around the wider Obamacare argument, remember that there are no cuts. There are increases every year for as far as the eye can see.

The Medicaid argument is a shiny object sideshow.

Yet Another Bailout

Part of the GOP package is, incredibly, A BAILOUT! A GODDAMN BAILOUT! They are going to GIVE billions to the companies that colluded in the creation of this monstrosity and even though the fix was in for them (in most cases these companies are protected by the government from completion) they STILL lost money.

Do we tell them, “Sorry. We rigged the game entirely in your favor. But no matter how many illegal presidential fiats Obama came out with to help you further, you still lost money. You made a terrible deal. Your losses are your fault and the fault of the corrupt politicians in the previous congress and administration”?

No! The GOP is going to make them whole AND THEN continue to support them in this failed program. There is no provision in this bill to allow all insurance companies sell quality health insurance without artificial restrictions.   If you can remember back to the old days of 2016, this was one of the flagship benefits the GOP was saying would come out of their “reforms”. Even when people like Jordan and Paul and I point this out, the GOP simply refuses to even address it.

But of course you don’t remember that. If you know anything of politics it is that the Russians did something, somewhere and that it must have been bad. We don’t know what that is, but it must have been something. That’s about the extent of what the present “politically aware” citizen remembers.

In the last go-round, when Trump was working every day to chisel votes out of the Freedom Caucus to support the plann that is now “mean, mean, mean”, some said their would be a part 2 and 3 of the reforms. The executive branch would just declare more reforms. They didn’t say that open competition would be part of part 2 and 3. So you know as well as I do, it is not going to happen. AGAIN, you are getting it right up the ass while you pose for funny pictures on Snapchat.

Is anyone bothered by the fact that the original flim-flam was kept alive by such illegal activity?!

Tort Reform

Does a single person reading this remember tort reform? Another major plank of the Obamacare repeal was to include tort reform; an end to jackpot justice. That is among the things that make the end-user costs in the real healthcare industry so expensive. Tort reform never survived the Trump’s entry into the race. It was never mentioned after mid-year 2015. Why? BECA-- USE IT WASN’T IN THE DONALD’S TWITTER FEED!!!!

 Another Red Herring: Pre-existing Conditions

This line of BS is two-fold. First, we have the people who earn at more than four times the level of poverty (remember: family of four $98,400/yr). That family could have comfortably afforded the pre-Obamacare premiums for health insurance. But many didn’t bother. When such folks suddenly find the mom or dad, or more tragically, one of the kids is seriously ill or injured, they start scrounging around for insurance or demanding “somebody” pay for the coverage. After all, how can they get coverage now? They have a pre-existing condition!

Obamacare validates such irresponsibility. It demands, without any effort on the part of recipients, that every nick, cut, sniffle and cancer by covered by the government. (Let’s not pretend that Aetna covering them is Aetna’s decision. They will cover because they are a corrupt arm of the government now.)

Then there is the same family who had coverage through their employer, also a happenstance of government involvement in health insurance in the 60s and 70’s. Employers were given tax incentives to insure employees with companies chosen as winners by the government. The insurance companies were required to cover more and more minor things. And so the Beast was born.

But now, the head of household loses his job. And he does have a sick spouse or kid. But since he is insured through his job, and the next employer has nothing but disincentive to insure him, there must be a mandate! And the Beast grows.

 The ONLY correct fix to our healthcare problem right now it to return the entire system, on a date certain, to the insurance industry. They know how to write real policies based on real risk. The cost of insurance would plummet. People could afford to pay for stitches and common colds and lice, etc. out of pocket. They would pay a reasonable premium to cover catastrophic illness and injury.

The ONLY correct fix deals with the recent expansion of Medicaid separately. But that must be dealt with. If you say that the expansion isn’t rife with corruption and waste, I’ll call you out as a liar.

It would be infinitely cheaper to cover pre-existing and high-risk patients by simple block grants to states or hospitals. The cost involved would be miniscule compared to running the Beast we have now. And it would not require 2700 pages of legislation and 30,000 pages of regulation to oversee. And people making 400% over the poverty line could easily afford REAL insurance.

And there you have it. 1658 words wasted. And that was just this post. Then you have my past posts. There are writers you never heard of saying the same things who also wasted their time. But never mind. You just go back to binge-watching zombie shows on Netflix. Or convince yourself that you can’t do anything to change things because you have to plan for your daughter’s prom or get the kids to little league.

Or you can use the cool, I’m-so-disassociated bullshit lines. You know the ones. “Oh, there all the same.” “Nothing will change.” “You can’t do anything about it.” Dude, you are so deep.

The only reason that is true is because the politicians have no fear of you. They have you so cowed and they are so certain that you won’t stand up; they just give the illusion of working for you. But this Obamacare debacle, along with every other bill passed in the last 30 years, proves that they NEVER work for you. And they know they can get away with it.

You can be dead certain of two things: The Beltway LOVES Trump. Anything they say about him, good or bad is window dressing. He is so easily played and used. And, the only thing the Dems love more than the present Obamacare-lite bill about to be passed is the single payer, government medical care that it will SOON lead to.

And it will happen because you thought electing a semi-articulate, showboat window licker was going to solve all your problems. Ryan was the problem and still is.

Chumps!

Educate yourself on American Healthcare, from an author who understands efficiencies and idiocy. A direct critique:

And let's not forget my book.  It doesn't center on Obamacare, but says a lot about how we created the bloated monstrosity that burped it out on us.